punch not < panc

[Nicholas Widdows]

<Rick Mc Callister wrote:>

> 	The <u> in English, of course, is /@/. English <punch> /ph at nc^/
> does sound very close to Hindi <panch>. It's possible that other European
> languages got the word from written English
> 	BTW: I've also seen and heard that English <punch> "to hit with the
> fist" <punk> "one who punches, or gets punched (or worse, as in prison
> slang)" is from a Romany word for "five, fist"

</Rick Mc Callister>

The problem is timing. <Punch> the drink was cited in 1632 when <u> was the
[U] allophone of the /u/ phoneme. The lowering to something in the [V] ~ [@]
~ [a] region might have been in place by 1698 when the association with the
Hindi [@] allophone of /a/ was made, but not before (IMO). The continental
spellings would've accurately reflected English pronunciation.

<Punch> as a pricking tool is attested from 1505 and as a verb 'hit with
fist' from 1530, with dubious examples before 1500, when the original sense
was apparently 'to prick'. <Punk> is from about 1600. Same problem with the
vowels.

Nicholas